Production chain of lithium‐ion battery cells is a highly complicated system with manifold process–product interdependencies and high sensitivity to ambient conditions. This complexity makes it harder to control and regulate economic and environmental target criteria (e.g., product quality, cost, and energy demand). Therefore, it is necessary to develop a holistic system understanding and to identify and evaluate the interactions between the process steps within the production chain of battery cells and their effects on the relevant cell properties. In this study, a data‐driven concept to acquire relevant data along the production line, including technical building services and cell diagnostics, is presented. Furthermore, it describes the combination of automated and manual data acquisition as well as merging of data from different sources, of different communicational protocols, and of different formats toward accessibility, convenient data management, and visualization.

This paper describes and analyzes the propagation of uncertainties from the lithium-ion battery electrode manufacturing process to the structural electrode parameters and the resulting varying electrochemical performance. It uses a multi-level model approach, consisting of a process chain simulation and a battery cell simulation. The approach enables to analyze the influence of tolerances in the manufacturing process on the process parameters and to study the process-structure-property relationship. The impact of uncertainties and their propagation and effect is illustrated by a case study with four plausible manufacturing scenarios. The results of the case study reveal that uncertainties in the coating process lead to high deviations in the thickness and mass loading from nominal values. In contrast, uncertainties in the calendering process lead to broad distributions of porosity. Deviations of the thickness and mass loading have the highest impact on the performance. The energy density is less sensitive against porosity and tortuosity as the performance is limited by theoretical capacity. The latter is impacted only by mass loading. Furthermore, it is shown that the shape of the distribution of the electrochemical performance due to parameter variation aids to identify, whether the mean manufacturing parameters are close to an overall performance optimum.

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The application of batteries in electric vehicles and stationary energy-storage systems is widely seen as a promising enabler for a sustainable mobility and for the energy sector. Although significant improvements have been achieved in the last decade in terms of higher battery performance and lower production costs, there remains high potential to be tapped, especially along the battery production chain. However, the battery production process is highly complex due to numerous process–structure and structure–performance relationships along the process chain, many of which are not yet fully understood. In order to move away from expensive trial-and-error operations of production lines, a methodology is needed to provide knowledge-based decision support to improve the quality and throughput of battery production. In the present work, a framework is presented that combines a process chain model and a battery cell model to quantitatively predict the impact of processes on the final battery cell performance. The framework enables coupling of diverse mechanistic models for the individual processes and the battery cell in a generic container platform, ultimately providing a digital representation of a battery electrode and cell production line that allows optimal production settings to be identified in silico. The framework can be implemented as part of a cyber-physical production system to provide decision support and ultimately control of the production line, thus increasing the efficiency of the entire battery cell production process.